Deception on His Mind (84 page)

“Mr. Kumhar was weeping,” he told Emily. “It's quite obvious that he's under considerable strain. You'll agree it's essential that once again he know his—”

Emily cut into the song and dance about legalities. She said impatiently, “Mr. Azhar, Fahd Kumhar is in this country illegally. I expect you know what that does to his rights.”

Azhar looked alarmed at this sudden turn of events. He said, “Are you saying that his current detention has nothing to do with the murder of Mr. Querashi?”

“What I'm saying is what I've already said. He's not a visitor, he's not a working holidaymaker, he's not a domestic servant, a student, or somebody's spouse. He has no rights.”

“I see,” Azhar said. But he wasn't a man to admit defeat, as Emily quickly realised when he went on. “And how do you plan to make this point clear to him?”

Blast the bloody man, Emily thought. He stood there in front of her—
sang-froid
incarnate, despite his nanosecond of alarm a moment earlier—and calmly waited for her to draw the only conclusion that she could draw from the fact that Fahd Kumhar spoke practically no English. She cursed herself for having sent Professor Siddiqi on his way back to London. Even if she got DC Hesketh on the mobile, by this time they'd probably be all the way to Wanstead. She'd lose at least another two hours that she could ill afford to lose if she ordered him to turn round and bring the professor back to Balford for another session with Kumhar. And this is exactly what Taymullah Azhar was betting that she didn't want to do.

She thought about what she'd learned about him in the report from London. SOU had deemed him worth watching, but the intelligence gathered hadn't fingered him for anything more serious than adultery and abandonment. Neither act portrayed him in a flattering light, but neither was criminal. Had that been the case, everyone from the Prince of Wales to St. Botolph's drunks would be shopped for a few years, deserving or not. Besides, as Barbara Havers had pointed out a day earlier, Taymullah Azhar wasn't involved in this business directly. And nothing Emily had read about him indicated a brotherhood with the Asian underworld represented by his cousin.

Even if that weren't the case, what bloody choice did she have between waiting for Siddiqi and attempting to get to the truth right now? None at all, as far as she could see. She lifted a monitory finger and held it inches away from the Asian man's face. She said, “Come with me. But make one wrong move, Mr. Azhar, and I'll have you charged as accessory after the fact.”

“The fact of what?” he inquired blandly.

“Oh, I think you know the answer to that.”

T
HE AVENUES WERE
on the other side of town from the mustard factory, backing onto the Balford Golf Course. There were several routes one could take to get there, but Barbara chose the way along the sea. She took with her one of the biggest detective constables who'd come to search the factory, a bloke called Reg Park, who did the driving and looked as if he'd happily go two or three rounds with anyone who didn't step lively should he make the suggestion that a jig was called for. Muhannad Malik, Barbara decided, was not going to be happy with her invitation to take a drive to the local constabulary for a confab with DCI Barlow. Despite the hours he'd been spending there in the past few days, she had little doubt that he clung to the Victorian bricks of the Balford nick only when it was his own idea. So DC Reg Park was her insurance policy, guaranteeing Malik's cooperation.

She kept an eye peeled for the Asian's turquoise Thunderbird as they drove. He'd not shown up during the search of the factory, nor had he phoned to check in or to give his whereabouts to anyone. Ian Armstrong hadn't found this curious behaviour, though. When Barbara queried him on the point, he'd explained that as Director of Sales, Muhannad Malik was often out of the factory for hours—if not days—at a time. There were conferences to attend, food shows to organise, advertising to arrange, and sales to stimulate. His job was not production-oriented, so his presence at the factory was less essential than were his efforts out on the road.

Which is where Barbara was searching for him as she and DC Park buzzed along the shorefront. He could have been out on company business, true. But a phone call from World Wide Tours or Klaus Reuchlein could have taken him out on other business as well.

She didn't see the turquoise car on their route, however. And when DC Park slowed in front of the Maliks’ enormous half-timbered, many-gabled house on the other side of town, there was also no Thunderbird in its pebbly driveway. Still, she instructed the DC to pull to the kerb. The absence of Muhannad Malik's car didn't necessarily equate with the absence of the man himself.

“Let's give it a go,” she told Park. “But be ready to have to strong-arm this bloke if he's here, okay?”

DC Park looked as if the idea of having to strong-arm a suspect was just the ticket to make his afternoon complete. He grunted in a simian fashion that matched his overlong arms and pugilist's chest.

The detective constable lumbered up the front path behind her. This curved between two herbaceous borders which, despite the heat and the hose-pipe ban, flourished with lavender, campion, and phlox. To keep the flowers alive in the oppressive heat and sun, Barbara knew that someone had to be lovingly watering the plants by hand each day.

No one was stirring behind the diamond-paned windows on either of the house's two floors. But when Barbara rang the bell next to the heavy front door, someone inside opened what went for a peephole in the oak: a small square aperture that was covered with fancy grillwork. It was a bit like visiting a cloister, Barbara thought, and the image was further cemented in her mind by the dim form she saw on the other side of the aperture. This was a veiled woman. She said, “Yes?”

Barbara rustled up her warrant card and held it at the opening, introducing herself. She said, “Muhannad Malik. We'd like a word with him, please.”

The aperture shut smartly. Inside the house, a bolt was drawn and the door swung open. They were face-to-face with a middle-aged woman, standing in the shadows. She wore a long skirt, a tunic buttoned to her throat and her wrists, and a headscarf that swathed everything from her forehead to her shoulders in yards of deep blue, so blue as to be nearly black in the muted light of the entry.

She said, “What do you want with my son?”

“Mrs. Malik, then?” Barbara didn't wait for a response. “May we come in please?”

The woman evaluated this request, perhaps for its propriety, because she looked from Barbara to her companion and she made the greater study of him. She said, “Muhannad isn't here.”

“Mr. Armstrong said he'd come home for lunch and not returned.”

“He
was
here, yes. But he left. An hour ago. Perhaps longer.” She inflected these last two phrases as if they were questions.

“You're not certain when he left? Do you know where he went? May we come in, please?”

Again, the woman looked at DC Park. She drew her scarf high and closer round her neck. At this, Barbara suddenly realised how unlikely it was that the Asian woman had ever entertained—if a visit from the police could qualify as entertaining—a Western man in her home without her husband present. Thus, she added, “DC Park will wait in the garden. He was admiring your flowers anyway, weren't you, Reg?”

The detective constable gave another grunt. He stepped off the porch and said, “Give a shout, right?” to Barbara with a meaningful nod. He flexed his cigar-sized fingers and doubtless would have gone on to crack his knuckles had Barbara not said, “Thanks, Constable,” with her own meaningful nod at the sun-drenched flower beds behind them.

DC Park safely out of the way, Mrs. Malik took a step back from the door. Barbara interpreted this as her form of dusting off the welcome mat, and she ducked inside the house before the other woman had the opportunity to withdraw the invitation.

Mrs. Malik made a gesture towards a room on their left which, by means of an archway, opened off the vestibule in which they stood. This was obviously the main sitting room. Barbara stopped in the centre and turned to face Mrs. Malik across an expanse of brightly flowered fitted carpet. She noted with some surprise that there were no pictures on any of the walls. Rather, they were hung with samplers filled with Arabic writing, each of them embroidered and framed in gold. Above the fireplace hung a painting of a cube-shaped building backed with an azure cloud-filled sky. Beneath this painting sat the room's only photographs, and Barbara sauntered over to examine these.

One featured Muhannad and his hugely pregnant wife, arms round each other's waist and a picnic basket at their feet. Another showed Sahlah and Haytham Querashi posing on the front porch of yet another half-timbered house. The rest were of children, two little boys in a variety of poses, alone or with each other, dressed only in nappies or bundled up to their eyebrows against the cold.

“The grandkids?” Barbara asked, turning from the fireplace.

She saw that Mrs. Malik hadn't yet entered the room. She was watching her from the vestibule, keeping to the shadows in a way that suggested either secrecy, stealth, or an attack of nerves. Barbara realised that she had only the woman's word for it that Muhannad was no longer in the house.

Her senses went on the alert. She said, “Where's your son, Mrs. Malik? Is he still here?”

Mrs. Malik said, “No. As I said. No,” and as if a change in behaviour would underscore this answer, she joined Barbara, pulling her scarf closer to her head and throat again.

In the better light, Barbara could see that the hand which held the scarf at her throat was abraded and bruised. Noting this, she raised her eyes to the woman's face and saw much the same abrading and bruising there. She said, “What's happened to you? Has someone roughed you up?”

“No, of course not. I fell in the garden. My skirt caught on something.” And as if she wished to illustrate this point, she gathered up a handful of the skirt's material and showed where it was indeed quite filthy, as if she'd taken a fall and remained writhing on the ground to savour the sensation for a while.

“No one gets battered falling in the garden,” Barbara said.

“Alas. I do,” the woman replied. “As I said before, my son isn't at home. But I expect him back before the children eat this evening. He doesn't miss their meals if he can help it. If you would like to call back then, Muhannad will be happy—”

“You don't speak for Muni,” another woman's voice said.

Barbara swung round to see that Muhannad's wife had come down the stairs. She too was abraded in the face. And long scratches down her left cheek suggested a fight. A fight with another woman, Barbara concluded, since she knew only too well that when men fought, they used their fists. She gave another speculative glance to Mrs. Malik's injuries. She considered how the relationship between the two women might be turned to her advantage.

“Only Muhannad's wife speaks for Muhannad,” the younger woman announced.

And that, Barbara decided quickly, might be a blessing in disguise.

• • •

“HE SAYS,” TAYMULLAH
Azhar reported, “that his papers were stolen. They were in his chest of drawers yesterday. He claims that he informed you of this when you were in his room. And when the detective constable asked for those papers this afternoon, he went to fetch them from the drawer, only to find they were missing.”

Emily was on her feet for the interrogation this time, in the airless cupboard that went for one of the station's two interview rooms. The tape recorder was running on the table, and after switching it on, she had planted herself by the door. From this location, she was able to look down upon Fahd Kumhar, which was useful in establishing for the man who had possession of the power and who hadn't.

Taymullah Azhar sat at the end of the table that served as one of the room's four pieces of furniture, with Kumhar at his right on the table's far side. So far, he had at least
appeared
to be relaying to his fellow Pakistani only what Emily allowed him to relate.

They had begun the interview with another round of babbling on the part of Kumhar. He'd been on the floor of the room when they'd entered, crouched into one of its corners like a mouse who knows that the final swipe of the cat's paw is imminent. He'd looked beyond Emily and Azhar, as if seeking another member of their party. When it became apparent to him that they constituted the whole of his inquisitors, he began the gibberish.

Emily had demanded to know what he was saying.

Azhar had listened closely without comment for some thirty seconds before replying. “He's paraphrasing parts of the Qur'aan. He's saying that among the people of Al-Madinah there are hypocrites whom Muhammad doesn't know. He's saying that they'll be chastised and doomed.”

“Tell him to stow it,” Emily said.

Azhar said something gently to the man, but Kumhar continued in much the same vein.

“Others have acknowledged their faults. Even though they mixed a righteous action with another that was bad, Allah might still relent towards them. Because Allah—”

“We went this route yesterday,” Emily interrupted. “We're not playing the prayer game today. Tell Mr. Kumhar that I want to know what he's doing in this country without proper documents. And did Querashi know that he's here illegally?”

Which is when Kumhar told her—through Azhar—that his papers had been stolen sometime between yesterday afternoon when he'd been taken from Clacton and this day when he'd been returned.

“That's complete rubbish,” Emily said. “DC Honigman informed me not five minutes ago that the other boarders in Mrs. Kersey's house are English nationals who have no need of his papers and even less interest in them. The front door of the house is always kept locked, day and night, and there's a twelve-foot drop from Mr. Kumhar's window to the back garden with no means of access to that window. Bearing all this in mind, does he want to explain how someone nicked his papers, let alone why?”

“He has no explanation for how it occurred,” Azhar said after listening to a lengthy commentary from the other man. “But he says that documents are valuable items, to be sold on the black market to desperate souls wishing to avail themselves of the greater opportunities for employment and advancement that are found in this country.”